Social media reconnaissance for the "X" generation.

Category Archives: Social Media Tool Evaluation

Tonight we had the chance to try out Adobe Connect for class. I have been a part of AC in the past, mostly for business calls with clients abroad. In my prior experience, AC worked in an “all or nothing” way; either my clients could get in and everything worked well – or the system just never was able to deploy for them/me. Each time trouble shooting was a random act of discovery, and the truth was – I was never really able to figure out what caused the complete failures.

In an effort to “beat” that situation for tonight’s class, I carefully entered the meeting room yesterday, tried out my head set and local DSL line and everything was PERFECTO! I was anxious with anticipation and looking forward to stress free presentation; it was not to be.

In spite of Adobe’s website which claims: ” Ease of Use: Adobe Connect web conferencing is a flexible solution that is easy to set up. Deploying Adobe Connect is quick and pain-free with no downloads necessary! Adobe Connect runs via Adobe Flash Player which is already installed in 98% of Internet-enabled desktops. Attendees can easily join web conferences at the click of a single URL, with no download required! The only requirement is a web browser making the setup and use of Adobe Connect extremely simple for users from all types of backgrounds.”, the experience was NOT pain free. The night was wrought with miscellaneous lock ups, sound outages, terrible echos, problems with video and personally (though maybe my PC’s issue again) mic issues.

I have to say, when compared to Google+, Adobe Connect was impersonal, it was much nicer to see everyone’s face in G+, and frankly – I think G+ had less operating issues. That said, Adobe Connect – DID ALLOW for us to use whatever format slide deck we wanted to use, and there was no “weird auto-reformatting” of the decks fonts/backgrounds like what happens in G+.

We aren’t the only ones having issues with Adobe Connect and it made for a bit of a stressful night waiting to present.

As I sit here typing this blog, my neck has a cramp from holding my cell phone against my shoulder since the mic wouldn’t work throughout the 3 hour conference call. Other than that – it was another lesson learned by me for why F2F makes for a better overall learning experience, well… except for the pajama pants.

First, Pooky should be hired by Kimberly Clark, as they are one of the Top 25 firms in the world and have spent an amazing amount of money trying to understand human eye tracking to promote brand awareness and increase sales. Perhaps the Pookmaster could teach them a thing or two about eye tracking, as he/she had a LOT going on in that little head while watching the mouse. Imagine how much $$ they could make selling what they learned from Pooky to Meowmix & Purina!

Second, I believe that Pooky had a strategy all along with this painting mouse bit, of course he was just too wise to give it away at the start. He/She was just going to wait that dumb mouse out, as surely he would tire out eventually – and pooky knew right where to find him. Besides, why waste all that energy chasing, lets just lie back and relax a bit right?? It worked for all the greatest artists!!

Finally, in spite of how we love our pets we sometimes put them in awkward positions to amuse us… I shamefully (though with a smile) share the following. Happy Halloween!

Fiona the Space Schnauzer…

ps: Is she NOT the cutest space schnauzer ever???

pss: This does not count as animal cruelty, as she is simply wearing her everyday rain coat, and we like to think of her tin foil antennae as an “accessory”… that is my story, and I am sticking to it.

You all know by now that I love a good title for my posts. Something that might intrigue you to the point you will actually click, read, and comment on it. I personally LOL (the old meaning that is – not the new) when I came up with this title, as I thought back to last nights presentation of Internet Culture. What I learned from class last night was just how little I know about the internet and its culture. I liken my internet experience to someone who frequents the library, but only reads from the autobiography section of books. It’s not that autobiographies are bad, there are just so many more books in the library to be flipped through, read, shared and appreciated. I would never consider being dismissive or even challenging those in the library who like to read self help books, fiction, etc. ; they are not better or worse than those who read biographies – they just have different interests, they are seeking something different from their choice of books, etc. So, this was a Ahh Haaa moment for me.

While I really don’t get the 4Chan thing, … I am ok with it. While I am a dog person, who could not appreciate the humor of a cute chubby cat that says funny things in kitty talk? – it’s funny and we all need a good laugh some time – there are REAL are health benefits to laughing! For the more serious side of the internet, flicker, youtube, yammer, etc. these tools offer tangible value to society in terms of collaboration efficiency, mass communication efficiencies, low production costs, etc. and their high usage and massive stored content are the very artifacts proving that. The bottom line, we are diverse – the internet is a reflection of our combined society – therefore the internet is diverse. We have so much to learn about it…

In terms of preparation for the class this week, it was so much better than the prior presentation. Early collaborative brainstorming, direction consensus, self assignment all worked with the help of Google +, without all of the noise created by Twitter. Twitter could then just be used for confirmations, minor clarifications, and approvals. There were real benefits of Google + in that everyone had equal voice and the synchronous nature ensured there were no disconnects in our thinking; it was nice also just to see everyone’s face while we were talking. I realized personally just how much I depended on that F2F channel of communication for understanding. The downside of Google + and Google docs is that they are still working out a lot of kinks. The help blogs say it all – and I am one of many that can’t seem to overcome the microphone/voice issue; it is not an isolated case per the blog/comment logs. Hopes are they will have it fixed BEFORE the end of the semester. While it is good to see everyone and hear everyone – having to IM in place of talking is really cumbersome and takes away the synchronization value of the tool for me a bit. Also, Google docs doesn’t always covert powerpoints cleanly to their format; it occasionally black screens slides with effects in them and or whacks the formatting, so that resulted in some awkward moments as we shifted from presentation to presentation. Trivial in the realm of things, but a bit of a barrier for creating a fully collaborative presentation.

Finally, the “Back-channeling” (BC) that we did last night in class (thank you Hanjun for giving me the name) was for me exhausting. I found myself unable to really give all of my attention to the presenter the way I would normally, instead I found myself distracted by the important, inquisitive and funny items everyone was sending by Twitter. The real time nature of the BC discussion made it relevant, but it seemed to take something away from the presenter I thought. Perhaps BC it is something that is an acquired art form like pacing yourself in a marathon; you won’t get it the first time you go running, but with experience – you choose your sprints wisely.

I am sure the time of the class didn’t help, but with all that information coming to you from all directions – it left me to invent a new “word” for our internet language dictionary TTT – To Tired to Tweet. In the end, I learned so much last night… but for sure, I am going on a tweeting fast today after a TB (tweet binge) last night!

It was more than just a little ironic that the week that we were assigned the group presentation activity via Twitter, I was teaching teaming to our freshmen engineering students. Each of us in our class have far more team experience than most of my students, yet when placed in the unfamiliar landscape of using Twitter as a collaboration tool to build a presentation, many of us were reduced to mere babes in the woods. In my teaming class, I spend a LOT of time stressing the importance of a few but essential elements of an effective team:

1) Establishing a code of cooperation (COC)

2) Assigning responsibilities for the deliverable

3) Understanding/leveraging the inherent strengths of the individual in guiding team behavior

4) Communicate, communicate, communicate

In reflection, I have thought about how the use of Twitter fits into these fundamental principles of an effective team, let me share…

COC – The very essence of Twitter seems to be oriented toward a code of cooperation of “when I have something to say – you, as my follower will hear to me”. Observing the “real” twitter users, I see this behavior played out in their frequent observations put on record, and their followers making thoughtful -albeit 140 character long replies in near real time. A subtle aspect of this COC is the difference between hearing and listening to someone. I can hear someone without listening to them. In either case, the game of Twitter requires you be IN THE GAME – no side-liners; you can only WIN THE GAME if you are carefully listening and replying to the tweets of your teammates, not just hearing them. Learning Twitter as an application, getting comfortable with it, learning the sometimes cryptic and compressed language, and finding a way to access it in a timely fashion were all observed barriers to Twitter facilitating the teaming/presentation building process. Twitter can be a benefit to effective teams by its very nature to facilitate rule #4, but as stated, you must be present to win.

Assigning responsibilities – This step seems straightforward (and really should have been for us), but for the synchronous nature of Twitter, and participant violation of rule #1 in Twitter space (Be in the game; Listen, don’t hear). Everyone had the right idea – carve out a part of the presentation agenda, take responsibility for it and get going. However problems arose when any one person lost synchronization with the Twitter thread; at that point, we found ourselves walking over the work of others, confused on how to hit the “undo” button and fearful to retreat to the position of doing nothing or waiting to be told what to do. This again speaks to the culture or code of cooperation within Twitter; if we all have equal say – then who is in charge? Twitter could have benefited us by using it to send a link to some form of poll where we could have taken a vote on who wanted to do what, then we could have divided the work using the timely replies of everyone. We could have also used it to send out a simple Doodle scheduler to see when we might have met for a quick organizing meeting, so that we only needed to tweet updates and status thereafter.

Leveraging individual strengths – In a team, there can’t be all leaders or all followers, and at some point, we have to own our role in the team. Those roles change and morph based on the skills and abilities of the individual in the team, and the task. Below is a table of team roles by Belbin (1981). Re-reading the Twitter thread, it is easy to see examples of how the team members for the presentation attempted to play the various roles; Chris and Hanjun filled action oriented roles, Geovon demonstrated people oriented roles, Xin, Jing & Quincy all filled thought oriented roles, etc…. The problem was that the speed of Twitter didn’t really allow those roles to mature. Further, being willing to step up and offer yourself into a role is a very complicated negotiating process that didn’t seem to fit Twitter very well. Twitter could have been used as Geovon suggested to have some sort of Face-to-Face video conference, in which we could read the body language and interpret more clearly the verbal cues as to what everyone was good and comfortable in doing to benefit the team.

Figure 1: Belbin’s Team Roles1

Action Oriented Roles

Shaper

Challenges the team to improve.

Implementer

Puts ideas into action.

Completer Finisher

Ensures thorough, timely completion.

People Oriented Roles

Coordinator

Acts as a chairperson.

Team Worker

Encourages cooperation.

Resource Investigator

Explores outside opportunities.

Thought Oriented Roles

Plant

Presents new ideas and approaches.

Monitor-Evaluator

Analyzes the options.

Specialist

Provides specialized skills.

Communication – Well, communicate we did and Geovon’s graph said it all in the final presentation! However, the graph also showed that we each operated on different schedules (early birds vs. night owls). This too offered challenges to the necessary synchronization of all parties into the Twitter threads. Because of Twitter’s speed, if you lost an hour of listening and participating, you may have lost your assignment, role in the team, or even your very direction. Twitter’s benefit was the real time nature of constant communication (lots-of-data exchange); its drawback was the same – communication with a fire hose. If we had thought of Twitter not as a tool in the process, but as an additional team member, we would have considered its strengths and weaknesses, and leveraged it appropriately, – not forcing it to work against its very nature. If Twitter were a team member she would be our Specialist.

Overall, this was an amazing, immersive, sometimes painful learning experience from which I have mined many golden nuggets. I have learned first- hand how incentives can motivate change, I have witnessed interesting and complicating team dynamics in the Web 2.0 world, and I have benefitted by testing what I teach about teamwork, and examining closely the paradigms that can arise in the social media space.